In this paper we present an original approach to analyze the compositionality of indefinite expressions in Romance by investigating the relevance of their syntactic distribution in relation to their meaning. This approach has the advantage of allowing us to explore the question of how syntactic structure can determine the meaning of different forms of indefiniteness. To that end, we postulate a common derivation for bare plurals, bare mass and de phrases, whereby an abstract operator de is adjoined to definite determiners and shifts entities into property-type expressions. Quantificational specificity is proposed to be derived from a syntactic structure in which weak quantifiers select for indefinite de-phrases, no matter whether de is overt at Spell-Out or not; these quantifiers turn properties into generalized quantifiers. The anti-specificity meaning of some indefinites is derived by adjoining in the syntactic structure an abstract operator alg that encodes the speaker’s epistemic state of ignorance to a quantifier encoded for specificity, and it turns a generalized quantifier into a modified generalized quantifier. The paper also brings some general predictions on how indefiniteness is expressed in Romance, as it provides extensive support from five Romance languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, French, Italian and Spanish.

中文翻译：

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一种句法驱动的方法来处理浪漫中的不确定性、特异性和反特异性

在本文中，我们提出了一种原始方法，通过调查它们的句法分布与其含义的相关性来分析浪漫中不定表达的组合性。这种方法的优点是允许我们探索句法结构如何确定不同形式的不定性的含义。为此，我们假设裸复数、裸质量和德短语，其中抽象运算符德与确定的限定词相连，并将实体转换为属性类型的表达式。量化特异性被提议从一个句法结构中推导出来，其中弱量词选择不定德-短语，无论是否德在拼写时是否公开；这些量词将属性转化为广义量词。一些不定式的反专一意义是通过在句法结构中邻接一个抽象算子得出的阿尔格它将说话者的无知认知状态编码为为特异性编码的量词，并将广义量词转换为修改后的广义量词。该论文还对罗曼语中如何表达不确定性进行了一些一般性预测，因为它提供了五种罗曼语语言的广泛支持：巴西葡萄牙语、加泰罗尼亚语、法语、意大利语和西班牙语。